Addressing her dispute with the 'Need You Now' hitmakers over the stage name, Anita White stresses that being an ally means they need to give up something sometimes.
- Jul 30, 2020
AceShowbiz - Blues singer Anita White is calling on the country stars formerly known as Lady Antebellum to embrace real change and rebrand themselves entirely, instead of trying to hijack her stage name of Lady A.
The "Need You Now" hitmakers decided to shorten the group name to Lady A earlier this summer, after acknowledging the 'Antebellum' of their former moniker was too closely linked to Southern U.S. culture, when slavery was rampant.
However, Washington-based musician White was left unimpressed with the switch as she has been performing as Lady A for decades, and the dispute recently turned nasty, with bandmates Charles Kelley, Dave Haywood and Hillary Scott taking the 62-year-old to court.
White has vowed to fight for the right to continue performing as Lady A, and insists simply dropping 'Antebellum' from the group's moniker isn't enough to distance themselves from associations to the Civil War.
"Their intention is good," she told U.S. breakfast show "Today". "I applaud them for that, but you can't go from 'Antebellum' to 'A' and think that nobody knows what it still stands for. If that was your nickname, and everybody knows it still stands for 'Antebellum', what change have you actually made?"
White, who is black, claims she tried multiple times to reach a reasonable solution with the trio and its representatives, "but they dismissed us."
"You want to be an ally, an allyship requires that you give up something sometimes," she said. "It requires that you put action behind your words."
And White insists her career will be irrevocably impacted as soon as the group drops its first project as Lady A - a nickname the stars trademarked in 2011.
"As soon as they put a CD out as Lady A, they wipe me off totally - off Amazon, iTunes and Spotify - because they have more fans than I do," she shared.
White added, "I do not want to give up my name. I have worked hard to get where I am. Just because I don't have 50,000 fans or 40,000 fans. The 4,000, the 400 or even if I only have four, they're still important to me."
"I'm up for negotiations, but I'm not changing my mind. They need to change their name. Just that simple."
